


The Sound of Rain

by Festiveviolet31



Category: The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (2015)
Genre: Fluff and Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-25
Updated: 2017-10-25
Packaged: 2019-01-23 06:00:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,113
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12500392
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Festiveviolet31/pseuds/Festiveviolet31
Summary: Illya comforts Gaby after a mission gone wrong. Just a quick little one-shot for my first post.





	The Sound of Rain

It is the sound of rain that wakes him. Illya is certain of it almost as soon as he opens his eyes, his immediate alertness a byproduct of years of KGB training. It had only been a drizzle when they’d gone to sleep, Illya thinks to himself. Now, rain beats against the roof of Gaby’s London flat like snare drums at a symphony.

  
Silently, Illya reaches over the bedside table and grabs his father’s watch, making out the minuscule numbers in the moonlight. 2:58 a.m. He sighs, the deep pull of sleep calling to him, and rolls to his other side. With eyes closed Illya reaches across the bed, craving Gaby’s warm skin against his. He feels nothing except cotton. Opening his eyes, Illya’s sees the bed empty, the sheets peeled back where Gaby should be laying. His pulse quickens as he sits up. Glancing around the room, he sees nothing alarming, no sign of a silent intruder. The only thing missing is the grey bathrobe, normally hung against the back of the bathroom door, which Gaby had taken from his apartment long ago.

  
Illya swings his feet from the bed and goes to the closet, pulling on a sweater and pajama pants. His movements are nearly silent. Once dressed, he cracks open the door of the bedroom. Through the dark flat he can see the French doors to the balcony open, rainwater flicking against the wood floors of Gaby’s living room. Squinting in the dim light, he sees the shape of Gaby stretched haphazardly in an outdoor chair. Illya sighs and goes to her; it is not the first time he has found her sleeping outside like this. He wonders when will be the last.

  
The rain immediately soaks him as he steps onto the balcony, and he kneels down beside Gaby. With fingertips Illya brushes her wet bangs out of her face before scooping her into his arms and taking her back to bed. He shuts the doors to the balcony with the backs of his heels, maneuvers an extra blanket from the cupboard with one hand while managing not to jostle his chop shop girl too much in his arms. Illya knows he shouldn’t put Gaby to bed in wet pajamas and a bathrobe, knows he should wake her up and run a hot bath for her. He doesn’t want to wake her, though. He instead places her back on her side of the bed and tucks the thick quilt around her tiny body, hoping that it’s enough to ward off any sickness that threatens her in the morning. He hears her mumble as he folds the quilt over her feet and looks up to see a fleeting, sleepy grin across her face. It is the first smile Illya has seen from Gaby, awake or asleep, in weeks, and he pauses for a moment and watches his chop shop girl sleep peacefully. After a moment seated at the edge of the bed, he goes back to his side, hoping that this night is perhaps the last night he will find her outside.

  
He is not sure how long he was asleep- whether minutes or hours- before he is awoken again. It is not the sound of rain that disrupts him. It is the sound of choppy breaths and panic. Immediately understanding, Illya pulls the duvet away from him and inches closer to Gaby, wrapping his arms around her. “Shhhh,” he whispers into Gaby’s ear. He feels the uneven rise and fall of her shoulders and he holds her closer. “Shhhh.”

  
“I-” she gasps. Gaby’s voice is tiny in the dark. Illya breaks at the sound of it. “I had a dream.”

  
“I know,” is all Illya says. He runs his hand along the side of her head in the way his mother used to soothe him as a young boy afraid of bad dreams.

  
He doesn’t ask her if she wants to talk about it. They already have. After weeks, Illya knows what bothers Gaby at night, he knows the faces she sees when she closes her eyes. He dreamt about them too in the days leading up to her rescue, and he’d coldly enjoyed looking in their eyes when he’d killed the men that had taken her. Those are the details he doesn’t share, that he will never tell Gaby. Those are the details he’d only shared with Napoleon over a tall glass of vodka, after the Red Peril and Cowboy had tracked down their third team member in a dingy, slimy weapons factory that housed a Romanian gang and an illegal arms dealership. Napoleon had tacitly agreed over an equally tall glass of amber liquor, and the two men hadn’t spoken of it since.

  
It is the fourteen-hour stretch leading up to Gaby’s rescue, before Illya and Napoleon had exhausted every resource and lead in U.N.C.L.E’s repertoire, that Gaby doesn’t share with Illya. She never explained the bruises around her hips and midsection, the blood they’d found staining her scalp and hands and knees. And Illya doesn’t ask. He doesn’t ask why he finds her sleeping outside, because he assumes it has everything to do with the dark, windowless room she’d been kept in and hurt in for fourteen hours until he tore down every man standing in his way to get to her. He doesn’t ask. Instead, he carries her to bed on the nights, more often than not, that he finds her sleeping beneath stars and moonlight. He holds her close to his chest on the days when he finds her, in the third-floor supply cupboard of U.N.C.L.E headquarters, struggling to breathe at the prospect of going out into the field again.

  
He doesn’t ask tonight; instead, he holds her close to him as he feels her shoulders contract with the sadness that chokes her words and strains her breaths. He murmurs the words “just breathe” against her hair and takes exaggerated, even breaths, strong enough that she can feel them through wet pajamas and layers of quilt and duvet.

  
“It’s going to be okay,” he whispers, as if it were Rome all over again.

  
Illya is not sure how long they lay there. Eventually, he feels the patterns Gaby had been drawing on the back of his hand cease, hears her breath even and slow to the point of sleep. Resting his head against the back of Gaby’s shoulders, Illya feels the beating of her heart and smiles, almost painfully, to himself. The last thing Illya hears before falling back asleep is the sound of rain on rooftops and the gentle thrum of Gaby’s heart.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! I appreciate any and all comments, questions, and suggestions for next time. I'm a little obsessed with these spies.


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